LONDON: Eurostar passenger trains remain suspended today after the wintry weather caused chaos. More than 2,000 people were trapped in the Channel Tunnel for up to 16 hours after condensation caused a series of electrical failures on Friday night.

It is currently unclear when services will resume. Eurostar is running tests on the line today. Severe weather warnings remain in place in northern parts of the UK as freezing conditions continue to disrupt travel. Snow has fallen and is expected to continue to fall in Northern Ireland, western Scotland and north-western parts of England. At Bristol International Airport hundreds of people are stranded after Easyjet scrapped five flights. An airport spokesman said the decision was taken by Easyjet to minimise delays, after problems at other airports this weekend. Flights were grounded for an hour at Manchester Airport this morning as staff moved snow and de-iced a runway. Temperatures are expected to remain below freezing.

Five Eurostar trains broke down in the Channel Tunnel on Friday night, after the move from cold air outside into the warmer tunnel caused condensation which affected electrical systems. Passengers stranded on the trains complained of a lack of food and drink, power supplies and information.

There were further problems when some rescue trains themselves broke down. Confused and bedraggled ticketholders continued to turn up at St Pancras Station in London today, hoping, in vain, to catch a train.

Eurostar will run test trains without passengers today to try to get to the bottom of the problem. It has not said when services will be back up and running, with a message on its website simply saying: "We are committed to restoring our services as soon as possible but our key priority is the safety and comfort of our customers."

Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown asked people not to travel unless it is essential. He said: "When we resume service it's going to be very busy, we're not going to be able to carry everyone who's booked yesterday, today and during this week."

Passengers who have suffered delays will be offered a full refund, £150 compensation and a free return ticket.

The compensation would be offered until the backlog of passengers was cleared and the service was back to normal - which Brown did not expect to happen before Christmas.

Nirj Deva, Conservative MEP for the South East of England, wants the Eurostar chief executive to step down.

The company had not been adequately prepared for the situation, and Brown should therefore "do the decent thing" and resign, he said. Brown said he was "very, very sorry" for the inconvenience. He admitted it had taken a "very long time" to evacuate people from the trains. "Clearly, if you're on a train stranded in a tunnel, it is a distressing experience," he said. "People will panic, which is why the contingency plan, to get trains out with people on, while they're entirely safe, out as soon as possible. That's what went wrong, it took too long to get the trains out."

The trains had spare water, but it had run out, he added. "I'm not saying it went well, I'm saying it went rather better than actually a lot of people say." Calais port was also closed on Saturday, causing chaos on roads around Dover and Folkestone.